Death and Life

Kia ora.

It has been about seven months since my last post. Sounds like a confession huh? In a way it is. See, I'm a really good procrastinator. If there was a profession that required sound procrastination skills I would be a Professor of it. Sounds familiar doesn't it? You're a procrastinator too aren't you? Yes... Seems to be a sign of our times.

This post is sort of about procrastination. Sort of. You see - I procrastinate mainly because I don't know how to start things. I don't know how to start this blog post, so I'm rambling. How about I jump straight in?

I'm dying.

Relax folks, so are you. We all are. The thing is we're also living. We're doing both! There is your proof right there that seeing things in black and white is probably not terribly useful. According to the film I saw the other night it is that black and white attitude that we cultivate for the purpose of being right - making our culture the right one - so that it lives on after us and makes us in that sense immortal.

Back up the truck girl - what are you talking about? Okay, so I saw a film the other night called "Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality". At first I didn't want to watch it because I have what I regard to be an intense fear of death, well, rather of non-existence. My partner assured me though that it might be cathartic - and in a way it was. I still fear non-existence, but I look at life quite differently. The film is based on the writings of anthropologist Ernest Becker, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book "Denial of Death". The film uncovers the researched and peer-reviewed theory that we create/cling to/get stuck in our culture as a means to immortality. This means we join a religion/political party/institution/organisation/social group for more than just the company and the ideas - we join it because it has a culture that will outlive us - so we can be part of something that is immortal, or will at least last a lot longer than our physical breathing body. It goes on to say that this fear of death, or rather, denial of it - is what causes us to go to war, to have conflicts, to argue tooth and nail with others that our culture is THE RIGHT ONE. You see, if your religion is wrong, if your institution is having you live under false values, you are not part of the group that will live forever. So you have to be right. And you'll do whatever you can to prove it.

The research collected various people's reactions to questionnaires and actions in response to tests. In half of the questionnaires and tests, the subjects were reminded of their own mortality. The other half did not have these reminders. The results were that those who were reminded of their own imminent death, were much more likely to respond with violent language or mean intentions toward those with different religious views or cultures. They were also much less likely to desecrate symbols of their culture. There were various tests so I won't go into all of them, but what they suggested is that people, when reminded they will one day die, are more likely to do whatever they can to preserve their own culture, values, beliefs. They used 9/11 as an example, to great affect.

To see what I am on about I strongly recommend you see this film. If you can't get hold of it, it is available in sections on Youtube. What it has meant for me is that I now view life in quite a different way. I look at others' cultures and beliefs with a new empathy. I look at my own life with a new focus - on making others' lives as wonderful as I personally can. This is because we are all afraid. We all look to culture for meaning. We can all feel as though life has no meaning unless we give it some - and we often feel as though we are not personally qualified to do so. We look to the mass understandings and forget to look within. I am looking within, and I am seeing a burning desire to have empathy and compassion for others because they are me and I am them. Regardless of culture. Regardless of religion. Regardless of differences. We all live and we all die and we can all make our lives meaningful and beautiful for ourselves and for others.


Kia kaha.

Nga mihi nui.

P.S. I'll talk more about procrastination next time...

Understanding

You may have noticed (or not noticed - given your life doesn't revolve around my blog posts) that I've not written for a couple of weeks. You see (hedging) - I've been waiting for a better understanding of understanding - so that I can profess to understand anything about understanding at all.

What is understanding? Here is what the Oxford dictionary online says - word-for-word:

noun

[mass noun]

• 1the ability to understand something; comprehension: foreign visitors with little understanding of English
• the power of abstract thought; intellect: a child of sufficient intelligence and understanding
• an individual’s perception or judgement of a situation: my understanding was that he would find a new supplier

• 2sympathetic awareness or tolerance: he wrote with understanding and affection of the people of Dent

• 3 [count noun] an informal or unspoken agreement or arrangement: he and I have an understanding he had only been allowed to come on the understanding that he would be on his best behaviour

adjective

• 1sympathetically aware of other people’s feelings; tolerant and forgiving: a kind and understanding man people expect their doctor to be understanding

• 2 archaic having insight or good judgement. 

Brilliant! This fits my argument perfectly. My argument, to continue from my last post, is that we cannot know anything - yet I think we can understand things. If we're dealing with people - I suggest we can't have the nouns without the adjectives. If we're to be holistic (bloody hippie) we probably need to have the power of abstract thought, insight and good judgement, sympathetic awareness and tolerance, and we need to be them.

This is my job as a teacher I think. I can't just teach people what things are. I want them to understand what things are. Or at least understand why we think things are what they are - and what everyone understands them to be - and why. This doesn't happen when people are part-time understanders. (Yes - I invented a word) I want to teach people how to be understanding. Actually, I have to change the wording around that - because I can't teach anyone how to be anything. People learn things themselves - and all we can do is plant the seeds, or show them how to plant the seeds themselves. This is what understanding is - it's personal, and it's universal - all at once.

Teaching, believe it or not, is up with the play on this philosophy now. It recognises that everything is subjective, and that our individual realities are constructed by our experiences. The key, and I'm still figuring this out, so bear with me, is to understand this in a universal context. There is a very long rabbit hole to go down with this - so watch this space!

Truth

Since my last post I've been thinking about the existence of truth.

Is there an objective truth? Most of us think so, I wager. Many spend their lives trying to find it. Are you one of those people? The people who are on a constant quest for knowledge, truth, and understanding? The question I pose to you now is why? Why are you spending your life looking for this truth to know and understand?

I'll tell you why I'm not.

Life on this planet, as I currently understand it, is finite. Humans have created our fortunes and now we are creating our end. Plain and simple - we are killing ourselves with our lifestyles of fat, sugar, and fossil fuels. The planet doesn't need saving - we do. Papatuanuku will right herself again when we're gone. I think this because I believe if earthworms disappeared overnight - everything would stop growing and the planet would get very sick indeed..... if humans disappeared overnight - the planet would flourish. This is my truth. It might not be the ultimate truth, or it might be, I don't know. I'm not going to spend decades trying to find out. Instead I'm going to act on what I think is happening - because I don't think I have the luxury of illusory time.

I'm not going to do this by recycling, using my compost bin, or buying biocups and plates etc. I do these things because they're better than the alternatives - but I'm under no illusion that the newspaper recycling bins in the Air NZ terminal will mitigate the millennially-captured-sun-energy I just used on the plane. Some scientists are saying we're at the peak of no return re climate change anyway. I'm going to do this by fine-tuning my social justice scruples and looking after my fellow human.

Now, how does this relate back to the topic of truth? I don't know if anything is true. I don't know if we can save our people from extinction. I don't know if we're even on the verge of it. I do know (oh dear - someone's gonna hang me for claiming to know something) that cause and effect seems to exist - and is quite useful. Cause: you help your fellow human in a positive, non-environmentally degrading way - Effect: your fellow human has an awesome time and passes it on. This may be karma, this may be good faith, this may be simple opportunistic point-scoring - but it's not sitting around wondering what the truth is before we act.

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Knowledge

How can we ever decide we really know anything? I ponder this more often than is decent. There are innumerate sayings that acknowledge knowing, if you will: “Knowledge is power”, “Know thyself”, “Know me before you judge me”, “If I/you only knew” etc etc. The list is non-exhaustive. This poses two points: One is what on earth do all of these meaningless sayings that we chuck around actually have to do with real life, and the other is what is it to know? For example: knowing someone in the biblical sense is usually different from knowing someone from having met them once – depending on what you did last weekend. Knowing a subject usually involves knowing it from one angle – the angle that's rooted in the bias of your source/s. The addiction we have to knowing things, while also having our best interests in ignoring that which does not confirm our beliefs, is a worrying one. That is essentially what this blog is about.

I don't know anything. I promise you that I don't know anything at all. You might argue that I know I don't know anything – but in actual fact I might know a great deal without realising I've stumbled upon some truths. We all might. Without a Great All Knowing One, how can we ever know we know anything? We are the sum of our experiences – I think I know that, I have plenty of evidence to support that. I also think I know that most conflict arises from some form of insecurity. I also think I know that because of these two things we should be working together as people and not suffering constant competition and having tv shows, ads, books and movies incessantly reaffirm competition as our status quo. 

To get to the real nitty gritty - how do you know you know anything? Seriously? Is it a convenient lie you tell yourself so that you feel safe - that you can actually know anything? I'm fairly sure that is what it has been for me. To be fair - if we never did anything because we could never be certain of the outcome, nothing would ever happen right? In essence we have to at least in part think we know something - like that the earth is spherical or that we are governed by gravity - or indeed that we are ruled by benevolent humans... All of those things are debatable. It is to this end that I make my appeal - not for us to sit around in bewildered shock that we cannot ever really know anything - but to remember that we cannot take anything for granted, we are always constantly learning and growing and hopefully consciously evolving! That even if we think we know something - we need not be arrogant about it.

I think...